Give brief history of the project. When was the Initial Commit? The latest commit?

It began as a message board in 1999. When more people became interested, the project became open source. The original commit for the project was May 14, 2000. The latest February 21, 2015.

Who approves patches? How many people?

Currently Dries Buytaert, Nathaniel Catchpole, Alex Pott, and Angela Byron make up the team of reviewers. The contributions are peer reviewed and then decided on by Dries or another of the core committers. Anyone can submit patches against Drupal core. https://www.drupal.org/node/21778

Who has commit access, or has had patches accepted? How many total?

The main reviewers are the only ones who have commit access. There are 37,610 people are counted as developers for the entire project.

Has there been any turnover in the Core Team? (i.e. has the top 20% of contributors stayed the same over time? If not, how has it changed?)

There has been a lot of turnover for each successive version. Dries has always been among these people but the branch maintainers have changed.

Does the project have a BDFL, or Lead Developer? (BDFL == Benevolent Dictator for Life)

Dries Buytaert

Are the front and back end developers the same people? What is the proportion of each?

For the most part they are different developers, because it’s broken out into different projects. Drupal Core is the back-end for it and the front end is constantly updating when new people make new themes for it.

What have been some of the major bugs/problems/issues that have arisen during development? Who is responsible for quality control and bug repair?

How is the project's participation trending and why?

Recently participation has been trending downwards, but it looks like it’s because the project is in an extremely stable state right now.

In your opinion, does the project pass "The Raptor Test?" (i.e. Would the project survive if the BDFL, or most active contributor were eaten by a Velociraptor?) Why or why not?

Yes, while he’s definitely a major contributor, there’s a ton of documentation, and there’s an active development community.

In your opinion, would the project survive if the core team, or most active 20% of contributors, were hit by a bus? Why or why not?

I think the project would survive, but development would definitely slow down. There is a ton of documentation.

Does the project have an official "on-boarding" process in place? (new contributor guides, quickstarts, communication leads who focus specifically on newbies, etc...)

Yes, they have a page in their community section that is specifically about getting involved. It talks about multiple different ways you can do this.

Does the project have Documentation available? Is it extensive? Does it include code examples?

Drupal has very extensive documentation. Quickly glancing through I couldn’t find any code examples, but there are links to a lot of other places you can look for help from.

If you were going to contribute to this project, but ran into trouble or hit blockers, who would you contact, and how?

The first thing I would do is hop into their IRC channel and ask people there. If the people who are there couldn’t help then I’d head over to their forums at https://www.drupal.org/forum and seek additional help.

Based on these answers, how would you describe the decision making structure/process of this group? Is it hierarchical, consensus building, ruled by a small group, barely contained chaos, or ruled by a single or pair of individuals?

It is currently a mix of hierarchical and ruled by a small group. While Dries Buytaert has the ultimate say in pretty much everything, there is a group of people who also help him make his decisions.

Is this the kind of structure you would enjoy working in? Why, or why not?

I normally work better in a more chaotic environment, but I could see myself putting out some decent work in this sort of structure.